How can little New Zealand have an advantage with our domain name extension .co.nz? Well it comes down to search engines and how they look at URL's or website addresses. I am going to talk about Google, however the other search engines have similar algorithms and therefore produce similar results. Google has somewhere over 85% of the New Zealand Search Engine market so if you build Google Friendly Websites and use the .co.nz domain name advantage you are ahead of the game.

Geographical Location Focus

Let me explain; Google has recently anounce a stronger focus on Geographical importance and this has resulted in a new found interest in domain names with a location in the URL. However when you think about it our .co.nz domains already tell Google where we are! I hear you say "so does every domain extension" true .ca and .cn etc tell Google the business is built on a Canada or China Domain name. But its not about Google regognising the domain extension, its about people typing searches into google! What do I mean; well if our friends in Australia type in "Campervans NZ" or "Campervans New Zealand" then Google knows that "NZ" is short for New Zealand and this is where the .co.nz domain name advantage comes in over say a .com.

It is true that "Campervans New Zealand" and "Campervans NZ" will deliver some results that are the same and some that are different, however have a .co.nz instead of a .com for a New Zealand based business is very likely to give you a boost for international searches. You can also add "New Zealand" into your website code title like "Campervan Hire New Zealand" this tells Google you are important for both "New Zealand" and "NZ".

It may be a small advantage, but its an advantage none the less and in the highly competitive Internet world we need every edge we can find! This extension advantage only works for a few countries in the world, UK is another, I'm not sure there are any others that are used in everyday written language. We don't type CA for Canada or CN for China do we? Let me know if you can think of any others and I will add them to this article.

To .com or not to .com - that is the question

It can be argued that if you are targeting international clients to buy your products or services, then a .com can have a more international feel. However if your international clients are searching for a New Zealand product or service then we believe a .co.nz will give you an advantage. If you do both, then maybe you need to use both and target the .com as an international site and the .co.nz as a NZ searched site for locals and overseas clients searching for NZ.